Dr. Murali Doraiswamy: Alzheimer's Is A Massive Looming Threat To Public Health

Alzheimer's is going to be one of the biggest public health threats in the coming decades, according to Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D., of the Duke University Institute for Brain Sciences. And not because the disease is being diagnosed in any greater magnitude, but simply because we are living longer.

Thanks to advancements in treatments of potentially-fatal diseases like heart disease and cancer, the aging population is bigger than it once was, he said in an appearance on HuffPost Live in Davos, Switzerland, where the 2014 World Economic Forum annual meeting is taking place, on Wednesday.

Currently, about 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's, he said. By the year 2050, 150 million people worldwide will have the disease.

And it affects more than the people with it and their caretakers: We spend about $600 billion on Alzheimer's, according to Doraiswamy. If Alzheimer's were a national economy, it would rank at number 17 worldwide, he said.

Watch a clip of Doraiswamy's interview above, and read more from Davos below:

Smith said the relationship between business and government has a few different dimensions that usually exist at the same time.

"The government defines the laws and we comply with them," Smith said. "There may be times we think the government goes too far and we challenge them... there are times when we work together. There are times when the government is our customer."

"Three things are going to need to happen," Smith said when asked about a recovery of trust after the NSA scandal.

Smith said government needs to take steps to restore trust with citizens, and said President Barack Obama's recent speech kicked off that effort. Smith also said companies need to restore trust by taking steps to reassure customers they have privacy.

As for the third step, Smith said "we're going to need a level of international collaboration that goes beyond what we've seen."

"To address climate change, I think you actually need to address the power of certain industries... and if you look at the power currently of the oil, coal and gas sectors, it's overwhelmingly powerful," Naidoo said.

"For every member of Congress, there is a minimum of three and up to eight lobbyists" employed by those industries, Naidoo added.

"They've got to understand that nature does not negotiate," Naidoo said in reference to political leaders.

"Speaking truth to power, we are saying what the science is saying," Naidoo added.

Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director of Greenpeace, doubted the efforts of those at Davos on income inequality.

"I don't think there was any serious attempt to address the question of income inequality," Naidoo said.

Naidoo also said the forum's approach to climate change was good, but slightly off the mark. He said the question asked of each problem at Davos was "how do you make incremental improvements without fundamentally changing any of the existing power structures?"

"There's a real denial about how serious of a situation we are in already and how fast we are getting to the brink of disaster," Naidoo said.